


it's the end of the world as we know it, and i feel fine

by raspberet



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 17:22:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1866111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberet/pseuds/raspberet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They fear you,” Michael tells him. “The prodigy, the chosen one, the fucking ace. But I don’t.” [raychael pacific rim au]</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's the end of the world as we know it, and i feel fine

**Author's Note:**

> glossed over as many actual details of pacific rim, because i didn’t want to screw up the universe, but i’m sure i have in some way. sorry about that if it happens.

The first time they step on a practice mat together, Michael doesn’t exactly trash him, because Ray’s the more experienced fighter when it comes to practice simulations, but it is a damn lot closer than anyone has gotten. Michael moves on instinct and flashes of thought, faster than anyone would have expected, and Ray finds himself actually trying to keep up. They spin closer and away again, their staffs in hand, and Ray is being _pushed_ , Ray is being _challenged_. It feels fucking good.

Michael gets in a flurry of good hits, then flips over backwards when Ray strikes out. His grin is brilliant and lights up the room.

Ray finally pins him down, gets the staff wedged against his neck. “Yield?” he asks, panting, smiling.

Michael grins up at him. “If I said no, would you  _make_  me yield?”

Ray finds himself laughing as he lets the man up again, throwing the wooden staff away. “You’re certainly a strange one. What’s your name?”

“Michael Jones. I would ask, but everyone on base knows your name, Narvaez.”

“Do they fear me?” Ray smirks.

Michael shrugs, a loose easy movement of his shoulders, that directs Ray’s attention to his lean shoulders, his muscled frame. He isn’t any weakling, that’s for sure, but he isn’t bulky enough to provide an obvious threat. The biggest threats of Michael Jones, Ray thinks, are his lightning-quick mind and rosy lips.

“They fear you,” Michael tells him. “The prodigy, the chosen one, the fucking  _ace_. But I don’t.”

“That might be a stupid decision, in the end, Jones.”

“I’ll take the damn risk.” Michael’s smile is quick and flashing, and it makes Ray feel a bit weak at the knees. “Thanks for the fight, Narvaez. See you around.”

He walks out of the room with his training staff still held loosely in one hand, hips swaying, and Ray laughs and goes to find the general to demand that a certain ensign named Michael Jones be the first partner he tries for his Jaeger.

\--

Michael’s mind is a turmoil of emotions, so much more vivid than what he usually feels, but Ray finds it remarkably easy to keep up with his tumbling thoughts. Michael stays calm despite all that, doesn’t chase the rabbit, and their first practice run is a rousing success.

Ray buys him drinks after that. Michael smiles at him, accepts his drink, and buys one for him right after. “I’m not the girl in this relationship,” he points out.

“What relationship?” Ray asks.

“This one.” Michael pulls him in by the front of his T-shirt and kisses him hard, all cherry red lips and blunt teeth. He chuckles when Ray reacts by pulling him in closer, until they’re chest to chest and so utterly in each other’s space that even Ray can’t tell where he ends and Michael begins. Michael tastes like cherry coke, like loyalty and determination and righteous fury. Ray kisses him back, and hangs on.

They become the best Jaeger in the base by their second mission. They celebrate by ripping each other’s clothes off in the locker room, and Ray gets to spread his hand over the curve of Michael’s pale hip, finds out that he’s pretty much freckled everywhere, and that he flushes a very pretty pink when Ray has a hand wrapped around his cock and a finger up his ass.

“ _Fuck_.” Michael’s head hits the wall of the shower room as he arches his back, wiggles around until Ray’s fingers hit a certain spot and he moans _loud_. “Fucking stop teasing, or I’m walking out of here.”

“You’re confident if you think you’re gonna be walking,” Ray says.

“I can fucking  _crawl_  if it makes you fuck me faster,” Michael replies with a trace of a smirk, and Ray groans as he fumbles with the bottle of lube, slicking himself up. Michael spreads his legs really prettily when he presses forward, when he slips his cock into that warm tight wetness, when Michael moans low in his throat and rolls his hips so that he goes in deeper.

“Still not the girl,” Michael pants.

Ray kisses him quiet, and smiles against his mouth, “You totally fucking are.”

\--

When their eleventh mission rolls around, they already have close to nine confirmed Kaiju kills under their belt. The soldiers on base start to call them the dream team. Michael just grins when he hears that name, backs Ray up to the wall and kisses him until they’re both out of breath.

“We’re the fucking dream team,” he says, “of fucking course we are.”

“Don’t be cocky,” Ray says. Michael raises an eyebrow at him like he knows exactly the extent of Ray’s hypocrisy.

Their eleventh mission is a shitstorm. Two Kaiju turn up instead of one, and Crimson Thunder finds herself fighting alone as the other Jaeger, Tiny Dancer, falls with an almighty crash to the roaring waves. Ray can feel the edge of Michael’s panic through their mind-link, but he calms them both down, tells him that they can get through this just fine. They’re the dream team, the fucking prodigies, they can do anything. They’re Michael Jones and Ray Narvaez Jr and they’re so in love—and in all the cheesy movies, it’s love that conquers all, isn’t it?

He should have been smart enough to know that life isn’t like the movies, but he starts to understand when the Kaiju picks them up and tosses them down like the entire fucking million-ton Jaeger doesn’t mean jack shit to them. Ray can’t remember getting to shore, just that it wasn’t his Conn-Pod that stomached most of the damage.

What he does remember is the rescue teams dragging Michael out a few minutes after he’s rescued. Michael is too pale, his auburn hair slicked to his skin by rain. Ray can’t remember if his chest is moving or not.

Michael wakes up in pain and disoriented, Ray sleeping by his side. The doctors tell him that he was gravely injured, that he was pulled back at the brink of death. That Narvaez hadn’t left his bedside for anything more than eating and showering.

Michael holds Ray’s hand tight when the doctors tell him that he won’t ever pilot a Jaeger again.

When Michael gets better, they argue about that a lot. Michael is insistent that Ray stays in the program, that he contributes his experience and skills to a newer partner that can rely on him to show the ropes. Ray combats that with the fact that he doesn’t want to, that Michael is the only Jaeger partner he would ever fucking want, that he’s in love and he doesn’t want to lose Michael to another mind-meld.

That he  _cherishes_  their mind-meld. It’s strong enough that he can feel it even out of the Jaeger, Michael’s bristling irritation, his strong feelings of uselessness. With all that, and how well he knew the fiery red-headed man, he should have guessed that Michael would run.

Ray wakes up alone one morning, Michael’s side of the bed empty and cold, with nothing but a small note.  _Sorry, Ray_ , it says.  _I love you_.

Ray packs his things, and goes to look for him.

It was only ever going to be Michael, for him.

\--

“You’re a stupid motherfucker,” Michael tells him, half a year later, when Ray finds him on the Wall, fifty feet up and sitting on the edge. Michael kicks his heel against the steel of the structure, sighs with his shoulders slumping. “And you’re probably a little obsessed. You might want to get that checked out.”

“I’m not even going to punch you for running off,” Ray says generously. “You look like shit. Have you been eating at all?”

“I’ll eat if you go back to the program and become a Jaeger pilot again,” Michael offers.

“No.” Ray doesn’t even have to think about it.

Michael sighs again, deeper, and his head thuds against one of the metal supports. “You’re really fucking stupid. The world is going to end, y’know. Double-Kaiju events are only gonna become more common. You’re depriving the world of a good, capable pilot.”

“Who is suffering from more than a little spot of PTSD,” Ray points out. “I say I’m medically unfit.”

“Did the doctors say you’re medically unfit?” Michael asks.

Ray says nothing.

“Thought so. You’re a stupid motherfucker.”

“Thanks for that ringing endorsement, asshole. I just chased you across the world for six fucking months.”

“Didn’t ask you to,” Michael grouses. “In fact, I distinctly remember asking you to stay behind and find some pretty blonde replacement for me, so that you can pilot a Jaeger again, so that we won’t _all die_.”

“That’s debatable,” Ray says. “The dying part.”

“I hate you,” Michael says. Then he reaches out and cups Ray’s jaw and pulls him in for a kiss.

Ray’s missed this so fucking much, like a phantom limb. He kisses back just as hard, and they only barely escape falling off their perch because Michael has the sense to grab for the supports when they start tipping to one side.

“You won’t even save the world because of me,” Michael murmurs. His hair’s grown longer; Ray thinks that he’ll start to like the way it feels when he runs his fingers through it.

Ray whispers back, “World’s going to die anyway. Might as well spend the last of it with you,” and Michael laughs, broken and jarring, and kisses him again twice as hard.


End file.
